Friday, March 11, 2016

From ‘Looking for transwonderland. Travels in Nigeria’ by Noo Saro-Wiwa

Nigerians like to shout at the tops of our voices, whether
we’re telling a joke, praying in church or rocking a baby to sleep ….decades of
political corruption have made us deeply suspicious of authority…

We’re constantly wincing at the sight of some of our
compatriots, who have committed themselves to presenting us as a nation of
ruffians. Their efforts are richly rewarded at airports, where the very nature
of such venues ensures that our rowdy reputation enjoys an extensive, global
reach.

Nothing ever seemed to change for the better politically or
economically in 1980s Nigeria.

I would arrive at an airpot that hadn’t been refurbished in
twenty years.

Lagosians will be the first to tell you that their city is a
disaster of urban non-planning characterized by overcrowding, aggressive
driving, traffic ‘go-shows’, impatience, armed robberies and overflowing
sewage, all of it existing alongside pockets of dubiously begotten wealth and splendor.
….Every square metre of the city was scribbled with informal advertising.

Once upon a time, Lagos was a placid cluster of islands and
creeks …By the fifteenth century, the area had become a busy slave port. Under
British colonial rule it became Nigeria’s economic and political capital. ….Nobody knows how many people live in Lagos;
it could be 10 million, it could be 17 million ….Lagos is a city of the Yoruba,
the dominant ethnic group of the south-west.

….I had noticed a contrast between the sluggishness and
ineptitude of city workers and the work ethic of traditional village society.
City workers operated with a lethargy I often mistook for attitude or laziness.

People were underpaid, I knew, but the extent of their
arrears was a revelation…. This culture of late payments – rarely pursued
through the slow legal system – bred financial mistrust too. Landlords often
demand hefty two-year deposits when renting out property.

Journalism and its pitiful remuneration carries no prestige
in Nigeria – telecoms and banking are where the money is.

….the Nigerian propensity for arguing is, in my opinion, one
of the finest attributes of our nation.

Lagosians …..perhaps exercising their frustrations in an
oppressive society – will participate in any argument on a bus. Rarely do you
hear someone interrupting the proceedings with a withering plea to ‘stop
arguing’. Everybody takes sides,
backing their man or woman, as if they each had a personal stake in the affair.
But Lagosian fury dissipates as quickly as it erupts, and beneath the
uninhibited displays of anger were ready smiles and a fundamental decency.

Women sold oranges next to ditches filled with evil-looking
sewage sludge so black and shiny it was almost beautiful.

Belief, especially self-belief, seems a vital ingredient in
helping people get through life in Lagos. There’s no room for equivocation or
weakness. People have to compete for what they want in an environment that
punishes the unambitious, the sick and the incapacited.

One in five of the barefoot toddlers defecating on the
roadsides wont live long enough to start primary school.

Politicians steal ….from Africa …a quarter of the continents
GDP – mainly by controlling trade licenses and skimming funds from government
contracts. ….every road, school, oil drum, hospital or vaccine shipment is
milked for cash. It diminishes the quality and quantity of everything in the
country, including our self-esteem.

Until 1960, Nigeria was ruled by the British. They
introduced Western education to the south, and also developed it economically,
exploiting in ports and oil, but they preserved the north’s pre-colonial
emirate systems. The north was divided into several mini-states, each centred
around a paramount ruler or emir. This structure made it easy for the British
to exercise colonial rule without having to spend money on employing colonial
administrators. They interfered little with the emirate system, its sharia law
or its traditional Islamic education. Consequently, the north fell behind the
south in terms of modern education and economic development.

Because they outnumbered the rest of the country according
to the census, northerners were allocated more seats in the Federal Legislature
after Nigeria gained independence in 1960. The three main parliamentary parties
reflected the dominant ethnic make-up of the century: Muslim Hausas in the
north, the Igbos in the south-east and the Yorubas in the south-west. …..By the
time Nigeria became a republic in 1963, the tensions caused by ethnic and
economic equalities were already surfacing. The less educated northerners
feared being dominated in the new, westernized political system. ….during its
forty-seven years of independence Nigeria has lurched from one kleptocracy to
the next. …..most of these men pocketed billions of the country’s wealth,
ruined the infrastructure, devalued the educational system and obliterated
Nigerians trust in one another, cultivating a dog-eat-dog attitude in all
corners of life. A lack of professionalism characterizes the top echelons of
government, and extends down to the ordinary workers …….and nepotism is rife.

…….traffic lights – of which Lagos has only a handful ….

The locals regularly smash holes in the pipes to steal fuel
that’s otherwise beyond their purchasing power. Nigeria loses millions of
barrels of petroleum every year this way from pipelines around the country. The
pipes bleed oil until the professionals can repair them. Carelessly lit
cigarettes or paraffin lamps can start such fires.

He was one of the thousands of ethnic Lebanese merchants who
came to Nigeria in the early twentieth century, a middle-class stratum that
rarely dips its toes in the indigenous gene pool, preferring to marry within
itself or fetch partners from the mother country. Their relative wealth and
influence, nothing special in absolute terms, shines an embarrassing light on
Nigeria’s anaemic economy.

….Ghana was the Gold Coast, further west was the Ivory
Coast, while Nigeria was unequivocally titled the Slave Coast.

Slavery underpinned economic life in the Lagos region for
centuries, its human cargo crossing Lagos’s harbor almost as frequently as
today’s barrels of oil. Badagry, a former slave port forty-five minutes west of
Lagos, was the focal point of this human flesh trade …..Between AD 800 and
1900, Muslim empires sought slaves from sub-Saharan Africa and sent them north,
to the Middle East and to the Asian subcontinent. Slavery, although a somewhat
inaccurate term, was also common among sub-Saharan Africans. Indentured
labourers were put to work in the fields, and paid a tribute to their masters.
But they usually weren’t the personal property of their masters, and could
eventually purchase their freedom

If there’s a country more religious than Nigeria than I
haven’t been there. ….years of economic struggle and political corruption seem
to have focused Nigerians’ attention on God more strongly than before ….Religion
anaesthetizes the pain of bad transport, low wages, stuffed ballot boxes and
candlelit nights. ….

Half of Nigeria’s population – concentrated in the north –
is Muslim, but among the other half, evangelical Christianity, especially the
Pentecostal kind, is thriving. This charismatic, fundamentalist form of
Christianity originated in the 1920s. Focusing on a direct relationship with God,
its adherents affirm their faith through the baptism of the Holy Spirit and
speaking in ‘tongues’, a strange babble understood only by God. Their
interpretation of the Bible is a more literal one, with a strong emphasis on
abstaining from alcohol, gambling, extramarital sex and other vices.

Charismatic Pentecostalism began to flourish in the 1980s as
Nigeria tumbled into an economic abyss.

‘Ninety per cent of literate Nigerians have only ever read
the Bible or the Koran,’ my brother told me. Only half of the country is even
literate. Most of the books published each year by domestic publishers are
religious in some way…..The demand for Christian reading simply obliterates all
other genres. …..But for all Nigerian religion’s flaws, I couldn’t imagine Nigerians
surviving without it. By following the path of Jesus, people told me, they were
paving their way to an afterlife of everlasting peace and happiness. Knowledge
of this helps them endure the constant anxiety over financial survival. It
makes them very happy…. World Values Survey, …..showed that Nigerians are
indeed the most satisfied, contented people on earth; they know that beyond the
power cuts and food rationing, bountiful heaven awaits.

Faith in God imbues Nigerians with an optimism that I rarely
see anywhere else in the world.

…all this Christian passion still competes with
pre-Christian beliefs. Paganism takes time to capitulate completely to
Christianity in any society – Americans were still burning ‘witches’ more than
1,000 years after Christianity came to Europe, and Nigerians are unlikely to
shake off our paganism only 150 years after the missionaries arrived. While we
replaced our benevolent gods with Jesus, we’re still convinced that the
traditional, malevolent spirits are out to get us, a part of that universal
human obsession with the ‘dark side’. And so Christianity in Nigeria partly
supplements our traditional religions; Jesus is often incorporated not as a new
belief system but as a potent new force to combat those ancient evil spirits.

Consequently, the lexicon of Nigerian Christianity is highly
defensive and combative. Our pastors talk incessantly about ‘satanic agendas’
and ‘war against satanic manipulation’.

Nollywood is still mostly an amateur affair. It barely
existed in my childhood. Nigerians watches American films, and they had a
curious penchant for Indian Bollywood movies …Bollywood tapped into something
they weren’t getting from Hollywood. ….Nollywood had grown into the third
largest film industry in the world in terms of output, churning out three
movies every day. ….the films are so popular they’re watches across
English-speaking Africa. The once-thriving Ghanaian film industry withered in
the shadows of Nollywood. Our films play on television screens in Southern
Africa and the Caribbean, and Nigerian slang can be heard in the slums of other
African cities.

Nollywood is popular despite its startingly shoddy
production quality. Convulsive camera work and poor lighting are de rigueur.
Tinny, electronic synthesizer music often drowns out the dialogue, recorded
without a boom mike. The characters speak with a slightly alien, non-Nigerian
vernacular ….The only exceptions to this rule are anger and disdain – Nollywood
actors always convey those sentiments convincingly…..The poor standard of these
films embarrasses many Nigerians …It is one of Nigeria’s few indigenous,
non-oil industries, and it represents a certain independence of mind and
spirit….Nigerians will watch Nollywood films, no matter how bad, because
everyone likes to see their own culture played back to them.

The Yorubas, Ibadan’s dominant ethnic group, were among the
first people to mix with European missionaries, and consequently became the
most educated Nigerians.

‘Do Italians like Africans?’ I asked.

‘They hate Nigerians more than anyone else.’ That didn’t
surprise me. Nigerians have a special talent for landing in people’s bad books
all around the world. We’re louder, brasher, more noticeable than other
Africans, who seem mild and timid in comparison. ….

‘Maybe’, I tentatively suggested, ‘the Italians don’t like
us because we’ve got a reputation for doing illegal things – like forging
immigration documents?’

During the annual week-long Osun Festival in August, Yoruba
society throws off its Muslim and Christian top layers and congregates at the
shrine to worship the goddess and ask for her blessings.

Abuja was a relatively new metropolis and the cleanest, most
orderly one in Nigeria. ….late 1970s, the government anointed it as the new
capital city, stripping this status from the incorrigible Yoruba-dominated
Lagos, and moving it to a central region not overrun by any of our three
biggest ethnic groups. ….local cars’ number plates carry the motto ‘Centre of
Unity’,….the city seems to have united Nigerians in the view that it’s the
dullest place on earth. …..no indecently exposed sewage drains …..Islamic,
calm, rich, tidy ……populated by transitory government ministers and civil
servants, who often prefer to keep their hearts and families in the bedlam of
Lagos, where the real partying is done. ….The city is the gateway to the
Islamic north of the country ….The Miss World beauty contest, hosted here in
1999, was abandoned after Islamic youths protested violently against the
perceived debauchery of the pageant….

….convervative. Most Nigerian parents are. They don’t want
you to go into music or sports or anything like that.

…the world’s least corrupt nations tend to have small,
homogenous populations in which mutual trust is higher. But Nigeria’s 300-odd
ethnic groups were prodded by the British into an arranged marriage to form a
‘unified’ nation state. Thrown into this bonfire were – among others –
centralized feudalistic Muslim states, decentralized confederate-style Igbo
kingdoms, and cattle-herding nomads, all of whom suddenly became
‘fellow-citizens’ in a political entity represented by an alien coat of arms.

In Europe, the nation state followed ethnic boundaries
(established through centuries of war) more closely. But in Nigeria, this
nation-state concept has flopped. We haven’t yet dismantled centuries of
extended family and ethnic bonds that have served us well through famine and
drought.

Nigeria’s cycle of corruption and eroded trust locks the
country in a tailspin. Nigerians have become pessimistic about their chances of
succeeding through normal channels….

…..the Islamic, northern half of the country….five old
Muslim men …..They said I didn’t have to wear a djellaba, but if I respected
myself and I wanted respect from others, then I should wear one.

I boarded a Peugoet …bound for Kano, five hours north of
Abuja…..Hausa music that jangled from a cassette tape. …The music’s repetitive
bassline and percussion were overlain with Hindi-style singing…..taxi men
..were all ebony-skinned Muslims, wearing djellabas and kufi hats, and speaking
in rapid Hausa filled with Arabic-sounding glottal stops and rolled Rs. Our
shared nationality seemed a rather abstract and unreal concept. …Kano is the
oldest city in West Africa, a once-glorious ancient city at the crossroads of
trans-Saharan trade, established as one of the seven walled city states of the
Hausa people more than 1,000 years ago. It became strategically important in
the trade route, and established connections with Mali and North Africa. People
from these parts and Muslim Fulani herders from the Senegal valley, migrated to
Kano, bringing artisanal skills and Islam, which arrived some time between the
twelfth and fourteenth centuries. The Fulani integrated with the Hausa people
as an educated elite. By the sixteenth century the city had become a centre of
Islamic scholarship, and was ringed by a large wall. Kano’s traders travelled
as far as the Mediterranean, modern-day Ghana and Gabon ….At the height of its
powers in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the city state was sending
300-camel loads of cloth to Timbuktu. By the nineteenth century, Kano was
receiving cloth from Manchester in England, silk and sugar from France,
clothing from Tunisia and Egypt, and reading glasses from Venice. ….Kano
enjoyed high levels of literacy and architectural sophistication…………

By the year 2000, the city was enforcing Islamic sharia
law…… prescribing lashings and amputations for thieves and miscreants. Women
were temporarily banned from riding okadas (too much spreading of legs) and ordered
to sit at the back of buses instead.

Islam, established here long before Christianity arrived,
was an older and more languid affair, free of evangelism’s teenage fervor.
Christianity confronted you and pummelled, whereas Islam lay under your feet,
underpinning every aspect of society in its quietly dictatorial way. Everyone
appeared laid-back.

The toilet was thankfully clean (Nigerian hotels never
failed in that area), ….

………mightly Lake Chad, on Nigeria’s north-eastern border …One
off the world’s most voluminous bodies of freshwater is being sucked dry by
irrigation, dwindling rainfall and desertification caused by the felling of
trees. The lake, once an expanse of 26,000 square kilometres in the 1960s, now
occupies a humbling 1,500 square kilometres.

The weddings, the humour, the music …..were what made
Nigeria special….

South-eastern Nigeria is blessed with some of the most
biodiverse land on the planet.

I didn’t know giraffes were even edible. There seems to be a
place in Nigerian cooking pots for anything that moves.

In many parts of Nigeria, eating a meal without meat was a
pointless, flavourless endeavor ….

The Europeans fomented war between African tribes in order
to produce prisoners of war who could become slaves.

There were armed highway robberies and museum thefts,
certainly, but pettier theft wasn’t as prevalent as I feared. On my travels,
I’d had no qualms about leaving my bags unattended in a minibus on intercity
journeys. I am my fellow passengers would disembark the vehicle, its windows
left open and eat lunch. Nobody stole our things, not even the almajari street kids who swarm around
vehicles in northern towns to beg for food and money.

….Lagos is in fact one of Nigeria’s greatest success
stories. Its an achievement when 15 million people across 250 ethnic groups can
live together relatively harmoniously in an unstructured, dirty metropolis
seemingly governed by no one. Lagos is an anthropological case study in how
humans interact with one another when confined in tight, ungoverned spaces.….